both were married. Sharon was expecting her second child and Kate was the mother of two children and three stepchildren. Both women were nurses, one married to a teacher and one to an aircraft mechanic. They were working mothers with very full and busy lives. And Erin had made it clear she wanted it to be Hannah.
“I have no idea how to raise a child,” Hannah said.
“Neither did we,” Kate said. “I feel your pain. I inherited three stepchildren who hated me on sight. At least Noah loves you.”
“We’ve lived in different towns. We haven’t spent that much time together. He knows us all mostly because his mom was close to us.” Because as young women will do, when they did get together, they tried to leave the kids behind. There were the occasional holiday gatherings, kids included, but as Hannah didn’t have kids for Noah to play with, she felt they hadn’t really bonded yet. And Noah had a couple of health issues that Hannah wasn’t up to speed on because, while she paid attention when Erin talked, she wasn’t dealing with his condition every day. He had a very mild case of cerebral palsy that caused weakness in his legs and for that he wore leg braces, used forearm crutches and spent a lot of time in physical therapy. Fortunately he was otherwise healthy. She knew there was every possibility those legs would strengthen and he’d reach his full mobility potential with the proper care. But not only was Hannah not a nurse like her other two friends, she was also not a mother.
“And yet, when she asked you, you said yes,” Sharon reminded her.
“The first time it came up, we were in college!” Hannah said. “We were talking about our mothers—both of them were terrible mothers! And she said, ‘If I ever have a family, will you take my children if anything should happen to me and my husband? And I promise to do the same for you!’ And then five years ago when she decided to have a baby alone, she asked me again. Five years ago when I was thirty and I thought I was getting married in less than a year. I thought I’d get married and have a family. I didn’t ever expect it to really happen or that I’d be on my own when it did. Oh God, I love Noah, but what if I fail him?”
That was when she remembered Erin had said the same thing when she was expecting—and she was the best mom Noah could have asked for.
“Sometimes those physical and health problems are easier to deal with than the emotional ones,” Kate said. “My kids are all physically healthy but they have one emotional crisis after another. At least Erin and Noah had a plan and he was being treated. The last time we talked, Erin said he was improving steadily and she was confident that Noah was going to be strong and able in every way.”
“And grieving his mother,” Hannah said. “What if I fail him there?”
“All of us are at risk for that,” Kate said. “We’ll help you as much as we can. I think she was depending on all of us.”
In the end the three women stayed with Noah for a week, accomplished a very lovely service, packed up his belongings and closed up Erin’s house, putting it in the hands of a Realtor. Burying his mother and leaving his beloved babysitter was hard on him, but Hannah promised him they would be visiting Linda and her children, who had become his friends. Hannah, along with Sharon and Kate, met with Noah’s doctors and physical therapists, collected his medical records and headed back to Minneapolis. There was a trust and insurance money, though it would take a while for all of that to be settled, but Noah was medically insured, thanks to Erin’s diligence, and Hannah could look at a list of good practitioners that his Madison doctors and therapists had recommended.
But it had taken her the better part of a half hour to get his leg braces on the first time. And Noah had to help her.
Hannah immediately took family leave. She planned to cancel her Colorado getaway, though that was low on her list of priorities. It was already April and she wanted to get Noah registered for school in the fall so they could spend the next few months getting to know each other before he started his life with a new school. She also needed to find a new babysitter so she could work, figure out how she was going to travel for business, set him up with new doctors...
And then Noah said the words that broke her heart. “Hannah, is my mom happy?”
It took every cell in her body to keep from crumbling. “She is safe and happy and living the life of an angel among angels who laugh and sing and watch over us. She’s happy and she’s always near. She lives in our hearts because when we remember her, we know she’s close to us. She loves us and we love her. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “It would be better for me if she was here.”
“I know, buddy. I know.” She hugged him close. “You know what? Screw work and responsibility. We have a vacation coming up. I rented us a huge cabin, a beautiful cabin on a beautiful lake in the Rocky Mountains, and it’s amazing. There are lots of elk. I mean lots. What do you say? Should we take a vacation before we do all this work of settling in? We need time together, you and me.”
“Okay. Hannah, but is screw one of those words you’re not supposed to say?”